My Lords, all I am saying about operating hours is that they are still being finalised.
The noble Baroness, Lady Oppenheim-Barnes, expressed some concerns that other noble Lords have expressed, in particular that CAB volunteers might be expected to do this onerous job. I assure her that everybody who will be providing the guidance will be paid, so it is a rather more formal arrangement than that.
The noble Lord, Lord Flight, talked of the possibility of people being given inappropriate advice. It is not a question of the guidance being like advice, to the extent of saying at the end of the session, “You should therefore do X rather than Y”. The purpose of the guidance is to set out the options so that people can make informed choices. He referred to people hanging in mid-air because they would not know what to do next. We hope that the combination of the guidance session and the information on the website will be extremely helpful. As we discussed earlier, the companies with which an individual already has a pension pot will have significant responsibilities to ensure that their existing policyholder takes all relevant circumstances into account. To the extent that the companies believe that the policyholder may be going off the rails, they are able to point this out to them and, we hope, guide them on to a more sensible path.
Perhaps I may conclude by quoting Gillian Guy, the CEO of Citizens Advice, speaking on BBC Radio 4’s “Money Box” last Saturday. She said:
“We are absolutely confident that our service will be up and running and … we’re really pleased that we have a role in this pensions guidance delivery, because it actually plays to our strengths in helping people understand the options that are open to them and setting them on a path where they can take decisions in a well-informed place”.
We agree. I hope that the noble Lord will feel reassured that the Government will provide sufficient funding to delivery partners to provide the guidance service and therefore feel able to withdraw the amendment.